Human Science

This is an expanded version of the presentation I gave at Meiji University in Tokyo on July 30, 2016, as part of a workshop Human Science and Phenomenology:Reconsidering the Approach to Experiences of Others, kindly organized by Dr. Shogo Tanaka of Tokai University and Kayoko Ueda of Kawasaki Univesity. Dr. Ueda, Dr. Masahiro Nochi of the[continue reading…]

“It is one thing to sift the data of inner observation conceptually and to set them up as compounds, then to decompose these into ultimate ‘simple’ elements and to study through artificial variation by observation and experiment, the conditions and results of such combinations. It is quite another to describe and understand the units[continue reading…]

Here is a link to my contribution to the festschrift celebrating Amedeo Giorgi’s career in phenomenological psychology. I pose the question: why should the scientific status of our work be a compelling issue for the next generation of qualitative psychological researchers? I explore the criteria for science proposed by Giorgi, and discuss van Manen’s hermeneutic[continue reading…]

Here’s an example of a phenomenological dissertation method chapter. This paper is the methodology section of Broomé’s doctoral dissertation that outlines the Descriptive Phenomenological Psychological Method of research as taught by Amedeo P. Giorgi. Giorgi (2009) based his method on Husserl’s descriptive phenomenological philosophy as an alternative epistemology for human science research. This method section[continue reading…]

The students who put this question to me are usually taking their first course in phenomenological or hermeneutic (narrative) psychological research. And in a way, I feel for them, because many of them didn’t expect to be facing something called “epistemology,” and bumping into any number of arcane Greek terms that seem to bear no[continue reading…]

In August 2011 Amedeo Giorgi was interviewed at Saybrook’s graduate conference on themes related to his life’s work in phenomenological psychological research. The panel was comprised of four former doctoral students of Giorgi’s at Saybrook: Drs. Lisa K. Mastain, Adrienne Murphy, and Sophia Reinders, and was moderated by Marc Applebaum. This transcript was edited by[continue reading…]

During the current global recession rising suicide rates have being witnessed across Europe; this is echoed by American data on increases in suicides and depression. I invited philosopher Susi Ferrarello to reflect upon the rash of suicides amid Italy’s social crisis. –Marc Applebaum Phenomenology and the Representation of Personal Identity I am writing and working in a language[continue reading…]

Empathy “is taken to disclose rather than establish intersubjectivity” (Zahavi, 2001, p. 154). 2012 marks the 10th year of my phenomenologically-based empathy training (Englander, submitted) and what better way to spend an anniversary than bringing a practical application of descriptive phenomenological psychology to the corporate world. In 2012 I was asked to pilot my empathy training with a[continue reading…]

As a phenomenological psychologist, I participate in the tradition of human science (Ger: Geisteswissenschaften). Since the foundation of this movement in the pioneering work of Giambattista Vico in the 18th century and Wilhelm Dilthey in the 19th, human science researchers have claimed that the study of human beings demands a radically different approach from that[continue reading…]